Amazon submitted a bid to the White House to purchase the social media app TikTok from its Chinese owners, CNBC has confirmed.

The company sent its proposal in a letter this week to Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, according to a source familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the discussions are confidential. The parties aren’t treating the bid seriously, however, given that it was submitted just days before a deadline staving off a U.S. ban is set to expire, the person said.

Amazon declined to comment.

The e-commerce company’s offer, which was first reported by The New York Times, comes as TikTok’s fate in the U.S. is up in the air. The short-form video app faces another potential shutdown in the U.S. on April 5 if ByteDance, its parent company, can’t reach a deal to divest TikTok’s American operations. Lawmakers passed a bill last year setting a Jan. 19 deadline for the sale, but Trump signed an executive order granting a 75-day extension for a potential deal.

Trump could announce a decision on TikTok’s fate in the U.S. as soon as Wednesday, sources familiar with the situation told CNBC’s David Faber. Mobile technology company AppLovin has also made a bid for TikTok, Faber reported separately, citing sources familiar with the matter.

TikTok has emerged as a major hub for e-commerce as it has poured money into growing its online marketplace, called TikTok Shop. TikTok’s lucrative marketplace, coupled with the app’s more than 170 million users, could be an attractive asset for Amazon. Following TikTok’s success, Amazon launched and then shuttered a short-form video service of its own.

Last August, the two companies formed a partnership that allowed TikTok users to link their account with Amazon and make purchases from the site without leaving the app. The deal attracted scrutiny from lawmakers who were concerned about its potential national security risks.

WATCH: How TikTok Shop is beating Amazon and Temu in social shopping

Eric Trump says his family was “the most canceled company, probably on Earth.”

That was then.

With his dad, President Donald Trump, back in the White House, he sees a new money-making opportunity.

“It actually is what drove us toward cryptocurrency,” the president’s middle son told CNBC, referring to the Trump family’s latest business endeavors. “You realize that cryptocurrency was a lot faster, it was a lot more pragmatic, it was a lot more transparent, it was exponentially cheaper.”

In 2022, about two years after the end of President Trump’s first term, two subsidiaries of the Trump Organization were convicted by a jury in New York of multiple crimes, including tax fraud, falsifying business records and conspiracy. The guilty verdicts on all 17 charged counts came three weeks after Trump declared his 2024 candidacy.

Last month, the Trump Organization sued Capital One in Florida over allegedly “unjustifiably” closing more than 300 of the company’s bank accounts following the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. The lawsuit claimed Capitol One was acting on “unsubstantiated, ‘woke’ beliefs that it needed to distance itself from President Trump and his conservative political views.”

Prior to Trump’s return to the White House, the Trump Organization unveiled a new ethics plan that said it would limit the president’s involvement in management decisions and other aspects of the business while he’s in office.

But crypto is another matter. President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump launched meme coins just before the new term, adding billions of dollars of paper wealth to the family’s net worth.

Eric Trump and older brother Donald Trump Jr. are going even bigger. They recently announced plans to launch a U.S. dollar–backed stablecoin through their new venture, World Liberty Financial, and a new bitcoin mining company called American Bitcoin, co-founded with Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot.

Eric Trump described his entry into crypto not as a financial bet, but as a form of resistance, and said the move began during what he calls the “war on the industry.” Banks were closing accounts, the SEC was cracking down on exchanges, and crypto users were being “debanked” for simply holding coins, he said.

“They were going after people,” he said. “They were suing everybody. Banks were closing down people that just wanted to own bitcoin.”

That’s when Eric Trump said he started associating with like-minded people in and around crypto.

“At this point, I know almost everybody in the industry in some way, shape or form,” he said. “I fell in love with the industry, you know, a few years ago, and really dove head in.”

At World Liberty Financial, the Trump brothers are backing a stablecoin play aimed at competing with players like Tether. Eric Trump didn’t have a specific answer when asked how the project would stand out in a crowded field, saying only, “We’re gonna do it better, cheaper, faster, and we’re gonna do it with a lot of passion.”

Meawhile, he’s working with Genoot to stand up American Bitcoin, a new mining venture that aims to scale quickly, and possibly go public.

Genoot told CNBC he connected with the Trump kids through mutual friends and began trading stories about their paths into crypto, leading to a business alliance.

Genoot said the company is being separated from Hut 8’s broader energy and artificial intelligence infrastructure platform.

“We’re actually carving out the majority of our assets,” Genoot said. “We’re putting them into American Bitcoin.”

Eric Trump, who is co-founder and chief strategy officer of American Bitcoin, said “every single sophisticated country is using their excess power to mine bitcoin.”

Though his family is closely linked to the current administration’s pro-crypto stance, Eric Trump said he has no role in policy and no contact with the White House. His dad’s presidency was heavily funded by the crypto industry and, since returning to the White House, President Trump has rewarded his backers, signing an executive order to create a strategic bitcoin reserve, and pardoning Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht as well as the three co-founders of the BitMEX crypto exchange.

“I don’t have anything to do with government, and frankly, I don’t want anything to do with government,” Eric Trump said.

But he made clear that the U.S. needs a regulatory framework that allows crypto to thrive.

“You better believe that China is running very hard at this. The entire Middle East is running very hard,” he said. “We won the space race. We better win the crypto race.”

WATCH: Eric Trump, Hut 8 CEO outline partnership to launch new bitcoin mining company